Skydivers hit new heights indoors

British sport may not be experiencing a purple period, but all hope is not lost. There is always the Indoor Skydiving World Challenge 2008, which took place in Bedford this weekend.

The annual contest, now in its third year, was held on Saturday and yesterday at Bodyflight, the world's largest skydiving wind tunnel. This vertical chamber, previously used by the Ministry of Defence to test planes, has been modified to blast air of up to 170mph to simulate the conditions needed for human freefall. Fliers kitted out in parachute suits, earplugs, goggles and helmets leap out of the doors and are propelled as high as eight metres up, with a trampoline-style net in place to save them from plummeting to the ground.

Nearly all the competitors were real skydivers, with one notable exception. Half of Team Future, from Colorado, are too young: Justin Tinucci is nine and his sister Kayla is 12. "But there are only 3,200 and something days until I can do it [for real]," said Justin, who, like his sister, had dyed a streak of his hair red to match his jumpsuit.

The Tinuccis rubbed shoulders with the best skydiving teams in the world, including the reigning champions, Airspeed Odyssey from the US, who have never lost a competitive event. Ditta Valsdottir, the only woman on the Norwegian national team, Arcteryx, said the Americans' secret was experience. "They're old, and two of them have done more jumps between them than all four of us put together," she said.

By the end of the first day's competition, XL, a squad of rather lackadaisical Brits, were leading the race. While their rivals drilled their moves, XL hung around joking about spending their winnings. They had some reason to be confident: three are skydiving instructors and the fourth, an American, Brian Johnson, had defected from Airspeed.

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